Chandos are no strangers to Grainger. In March 1978 at Christchurch Priory, Dorset, Brian Couzens recorded a 55 minute selection of his folk settings. It was with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta/Kenneth Montgomery and soloists Moray Welsh (cello) and Philip Martin (piano): still available on Chandos CHAN 6542. Well if that was Alpha this box is Omega.

HowRead more easily we generalise from the particular. We know a composer from one or at best a handful of works. It’s reassuring. After all the range and depth of available music has for the last decade or so been gratifyingly bewildering. And life is too short to pursue the next work after that even if we had access to it; best move on to the next composer new to us and sample and reach fresh judgements again. Perhaps more often we have heard one work or performance and that is the trigger to pursue every work by that composer, so impressed were we by that first work. If our impression is adverse we are just as likely to pass by on the other side and find someone else’s music to explore. At one time the hum-drum myopia of the record industry conspired in this.

We decide if we like composers by impressions formed from one or two oft-broadcast or rarely recorded works. Generalist music-lovers whose prime focus rests with the ‘Great Classics’ knew Reznicek from Donna Diana, Bax from the Third Symphony and Tintagel, Holbrooke from the Clarinet Quintet or Piano Concerto Gwyn ap Nudd and Lambert from Rio Grande. In much the same way people know Grainger from Country Gardens or perhaps Mock Morris. With other composers such as Sibelius and Delius there is less of an excuse. While Sibelius has his Finlandia and Valse Triste and Delius his First Cuckoo and Walk to the Paradise Garden each has had, since the days of the 78, many other works available to the listener and even more so now.

This box is both antidote and challenge. Antidote in that there is approaching a full 24 hours worth of listening here. Challenge in that there is so much. That we have both in this box is cause for celebration in the half centenary of Grainger’s death.

This Grainger Edition box is a revelation though there are no new recordings here. All nineteen discs have been issued at full price as single discs between 1992 and 2002. The enthusiastic, the obsessed and the deep-pocketed will already have them or some of them though those CDs will take up far more space than this box. Some will also have Chandos’s Grainger wind-band transcriptions disc but it’s not part of the Edition.

The Edition is produced to the usual enviable Chandos standard in performance, choice of repertoire and documentation. I am sure this cannot be everything Grainger wrote but it does cut a hugely impressive six-lane motorway through his creative legacy and presents it to appreciative listeners at an unbeatable price. On that subject the price is set at 19 CDs for the price of four which sounds like a yet more generous variant of Bis’s box pricing policy. It should sell like hot pancakes and it deserves to. It has no competition; nothing approaching it.

Allowance must be made in the interests of economy for a wallet-style box that is serviceable but constructed simply of light card – a first for Chandos. The 19 card pockets are nicely done with a different photo of Grainger and a different colour shading for each genre – so the three orchestral works CDs sport a light slate tinge. The sleeves are very simple and the contents of the discs are not listed on the back. Instead the number of the disc is given and you then go to the 180 page English-only booklet which has full contents, all the sung words and commentary on each work in alphabetical sequence by work title - not grouped by disc content.

You should note that the numbering of the volumes has been rationalised from that adopted when first issued. So when the three orchestral music volumes came out in 1996, 1997 and 2000 they were volumes 1, 6 and 15 to reflect the order in which they were issued which allowed for interleaving other genre CDs. Now those orchestral discs are logically grouped as volumes 1, 2 and 3.

Good to see Penelope Thwaites at the heart of things. With John Lavender who also appears here (discs 13, 14, 16) she recorded the Grainger two piano music across three Pearl CDs (SHE-CD 9611, 9623, 9631) in the mid-1980s - all now deleted. She can be heard in this set including on three discs of the music for piano solo on Chandos CHAN 9895, 9919 and 10205.

CD 1: Orchestral Works I [72:28] There’s a nice sense of far distances, remote valleys and proximity in the smooth Duke of Marlborough Fanfare. Colonial Song’s sentimental and sighs and surges with the wheeze of the harmonium in amongst the rich orchestration. English Dance skips along with organ brightening rather like the Merry Eye of Herbert Howells. We were dreamers is an extrapolation of the cheery irrepressibility of Butterworth’s English idylls. Blithe Bells is in fact an oh-so-delicate ‘free ramble on Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze’. Then comes a smooth interloper in the shape of a symphonic wind band version of Walking Tune. The In a Nutshell suite comprises a gamelan-accented Arrival platform Humlet with glances towards the raw exuberance of The Warriors, a steady-thoughtful Gay But Wistful, the extended Pastoral with its green Englishry and then the precious complexity and the grandly slack-jawed yokel cheer of The GumSuckers’ March with plenty of bell decoration.

Green Bushes is a passacaglia – seemingly the first – on a sprightly folktune. It is subjected to tickling and caressing interactions with countermelodies. A brisk piece not written for dreamers but for tirelessly hasty country-walker, it is sappily driven and performed. Its innovative approach is said by Grainger to have led the way for Delius’s Brigg Fair Rhapsody and the two Dance Rhapsodies.

CD 2: Orchestral Works II [74:35] This disc offers a lion’s maw worth of the popular Grainger. Many of these pieces are in versions prepared for performance by Leopold Stokowski. All the great hits are there in balmy arrangements, recordings and performances. Somewhat breaking the mould is the Delian warm bath that is Dreamery. Alongside this element we get the phantasmagoric The Warriors – his largest and most exuberantly kaleidoscopic work written between 1913 and 1916 at the instigation of Beecham for the Ballets Russes. It was never performed by them. If you know Chisholm’s splendid First Piano Concerto you will know what to expect. This feral celebration of warriors from every country and age explodes in showers of aural shrapnel with at least a strand or two owed to Stravinsky’s Rite, Van Dieren’s Chinese Symphony, Delius’s Cuckoo and Bax’s Summer Music. Hickox’s is a good account, supremely well recorded but has not displaced a volcanic July 1982 performance I once heard by Gerard Schwarz and the Waterloo Festival Orchestra. It’s the difference between Eduardo Mata’s Dorian CD of Revueltas’s Sensemaya and Stokowski’s blast furnace original or between Rozhdestvensky’s first LP recording of George Enescu’s First Symphony with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra and Mihai Brediceanu’s version with the Enescu State Philharmonic Orchestra on Marco Polo. On the other hand Hickox well and truly hammers home the gold and splendour of the work’s dazzling epilogue. John Eliot Gardiner’s version with the Philharmonia – originally on DG with The Planets – has more zest and crisp definition. The latter can now be heard with some classic Maltings era Grainger on a Decca Eloquence double (480 2205).

CD 3: Orchestral Works III [70:25] A wildly kinetic Green Bushes in its 1906 version launches this disc. Hill Song II was written for his friend Balfour Gardiner. It presents - in one continuous flux - the wilder and faster aspects of Hill Song I without the interpolation of pauses for Delian dreaming. In fact the final section is restful and things do not end in the huge spasm that concludes The Warriors. Hill Song II was famously and ruggedly recorded by Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble. The tickling and tinkling Eastern Intermezzo which also features in A Youthful Suite can be heard in a version for percussion ensemble complete with piano and harmonium. Colonial Song - for full orchestra - is a love hymn to Australia: an arch of sweetly stretching sentimentality in a style that bridges Stephen Foster and Brahms. The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart is a slow tempo reflection on the philosophical tensions between the individual and the powers that be … especially in wartime. The English Dance No. 1 has some strangely Elgarian resonances but otherwise recalls the more lively sections of Delius’s Over the Hills and Far Away.

CD 4: Works for Chorus and Orchestra I [60:44] The first of four CDs predominantly of works for chorus and orchestra opens with a vibrantly tense Shallow Brown where the enchantments of spatial tiering are most wonderfully capitalised upon. Varcoe is more tremulous than I would prefer but he is atmospheric and concentrated and is so much better in Shenandoah. Marching Tune recalls the unison songs of Sibelius. I’m Seventeen Come Sunday, There was a Pig, Thou Gracious Power and Ye Banks and Braes are nonpareil in the hands of The Joyful Company. Mark Padmore excels in Brigg Fair in a version for tenor solo and choir. I was delighted to get to know the subtle and enigmatic Early One Morning for orchestra, violin and trumpet. Handel in the Strand struts and carols its stuff most life-enchantingly in the hands of Penelope Thwaites and the CLS.

CD 5: Works for Chorus and Orchestra II [66:57] The macabre irony of The Widow’s Party is ghoulishly cheery – the first of six Kipling tracks. They’re not all vocal either. Try the soulful The Running of Shindand and Tiger-Tiger each for five cellos. The sequence concludes with the caramel orient sunset of The Love Song of Har Dyal. Country Gardens plays touchball with Schoenberg in the delightfully grating and ringing Barry Peter Ould-realised version. Scotch Strathspey and Reel is one of Grainger’s most treasurable pieces – about as far away as one could get from the fatuities of tartan culture and pretty sea-shanties. It makes connections far more often with the idiom of The Warriors and of whirlingly possessed dances from the Caledonian highlands. The orchestra is rich with the power of gurgling woodwind and the brusquely precise pizzicato of guitars and mandolins. Great stuff! The last track again has the glorious Joyful Company this time in the hammered and excitable definition of The Lost Lady Found.

CD 6: Works for Chorus and Orchestra III [62:34] Mock Morris, Molly on the Shore and Shepherd’s Hey are edgily chipper. When Grainger is in this vein he looks in the direction of Frank Bridge’s Sir Roger de Coverley – a Britten favourite - and in this case there is a hint of Capriol too. Died for Love is out of the same green meadow as Moeran’s two pieces for small orchestra. Delightful. The Love Verses and the slightly chilly Early One Morning bring home parallels with Balfour Gardiner’s April and Philomela (long overdue for revival). Youthful Rapture (Tim Hugh, cello) has also been recorded by Julian Lloyd Webber who takes more time than Hugh and this piece can bear the slower tempo. Random Round is for the succulent Susan Gritton and Mark Tucker and chamber ensemble in which much play is made by the guitar and flute. It’s another delightful discovery for me – another among many. Towards the end as it gathers complexity it begins to sound like Bliss’s Rhapsody. Harmonium, Varcoe and Joyful Company relish the coarse saw-edge and macabre hyssop of Danny Deever. Lokshin makes even better use of the Kipling words in his Third Symphony but Grainger surely has the measure of the words.

CD 7: Works for Chorus and Orchestra IV [64:35] We switch from London to Denmark for this volume. Father and Daughter intricately mixes many solo voices and choir. The gaunt Kleine Variationen-forme is followed by the touching Song of Värmeland for choir. To a Nordic Princess is a lavishly grandiloquent piece first performed in the Hollywood Bowl as a love gift for his soon-to-be bride, Ella Ström. It verges on Richard Strauss at times. He was not averse to Strauss and wrote a piano Ramble on Rosenkavalier. There is an oddly subdued Stalt Vesselil. The very short choir piece Dalvisa is barely heard – a hummed vocalise. After such sensitivity comes the cheery The Crew of the Long Serpent. It’s for orchestra alone but then despite the genre attached to each of these four choral and orchestral discs there are many pieces that do not fit the declared pattern; all adds to the variety. Also purely orchestral is the Danish Folk-Song Suite with its defiant reedy trumpet solo in The Power of Love, its gumbooted, piano-decorated and organ-proud Lord Peter’s Stable-Boy, its tender Nightingale and The Two Sisters (a touch of Youthful Rapture here) and finally the unblushing, blowsy Jutish Medley.

CD 8: Works for Unaccompanied Chorus [53:33] This is a single disc of unaccompanied chorus works sung by the sweetly rounded Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chorus conducted by Hickox. Early One Morning suggests a clammy and misty morning. I don’t warm to the rather stiff tenor of Paul Badley. Things sweeten later and remain so for Irish Tune from County Derry. The Agincourt Song is suitably medieval. Mo Nighean Dubh has a Delian glow. Near Woodstock Town and Love at First Sight are softly enchanting. The overall impact of this disc is lower key than the others.

CD 9: Works for Wind Orchestra I [60:58] Works for Wind Orchestra I and II are performed by the RNCM wind ensemble conducted by long-time wind orchestra champions: Tim Reynish and Clark Rundell. Hill Song No. 2 is notable for its skirl and sway – echoing Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony more than once. Faeroe Island Dance is mistily haunting yet with a dancing pattern which is brother to Shepherd’s Hey and Molly on the Shore. The Lads of Whamphray March is irrepressibly cheery and seethes with fascinating invention. The tart windband flavour adds nicely to Shepherd’s Hey! All the favourites are here in new garb. It’s done with a snap and a clicking of the fingers. The slalom-ski runs, percussion ‘graffiti’ and anarchic instrumental slashes in Gum-Suckers’ March are well worth confronting. The punched out Lost Lady Found is the finale of the gamely youthful Lincolnshire Posy. It’s given a weighty punch here and the cross-cutting effects place it clearly in Holst windband territory.

CD 10: Works for Wind Orchestra II [65:04] The Power of Rome is a strange work – thoughtful and seemingly with a profound philosophical message. It has some weird pages such as the Holstian fog that is the section from 6:00 onwards. Children’s March in this version has parts for four tenors and four basses rather than the orchestra alone version neatly enunciated by Boult on Lyrita. This is a quick march before tiredness has set in and is as much a jiggy dance as it is a march. As usual with Grainger there are some surprises, skirls and expostulations along the way. Bell Piece is a salon farewell – a touch Puccinian - rather pleadingly sung by James Gilchrist who is caught very early in his career. Blithe Bells smiles among the bells before an Elgarian benediction begins to provide an underpinning. Then come two fresh versions of Hill Song Nos. I and II – by now quite familiar – well, II anyway. The Marching Song of Democracy – seemingly inspired by Whitman - is a tone poem that echoes with shreds of The Warriors among an opulently populated canvas.

CD 11: Works for Chamber Ensemble I [73:00] CD 12: Works for Chamber Ensemble II [67:49] These two discs present the essence of Grainger in many familiar pieces without the density of voices or the enchanting demands of richly dished-up arrangements. The piano is usually a sine qua non. The Arrival Platform Humlet is slightly Bachian. Stephen Orton and Hamish Milne play Scandinavie – a five movement suite for cello and piano. This encompasses soulful, Alfvén jolly and Griegian light romantic. It’s a surprise we do not hear this more often or indeed the other nicely calculated pieces here. The second disc uses a much wider range of forces. Harmonium, trumpet, two guitars and mezzo. The cheesy Hubby and Wife and fast-tempo The Old Woman at the Christening (a touch of Moeran’s and Warlock’s bibulous songs) provide sickly contrast for the rather wonderful Warlockerie of The Only Son for string quartet and harmonium. More Warlock is suggested in the mournful Willow Willow for tenor, violin, viola, two cellos and guitar. Lisbon is for wind quintet and is a delight but then so is Walking Tune for the same forces. The Nightingale and The Two Sisters for cello and harmonium make a good soulful pairing. Stephen Varcoe is excellent in Bold William Taylor – a song familiar from the Britten-Decca Grainger Salute. The Power of Love starts with the piano evoking harp arpeggios – a winsome piece. Free Music for string quartet dates from the 1930s and his experiments with writing for multiple theremins. The music slips and slides into and out of tonality. This is indeed avant-garde music surrounded here by folk songs. Died for Love is for Della Jones’ mezzo and for flute, viola, and cello. Again the mournful yet light-suffused effect is similar to the Warlock songs for voice and string quartet. We end with a rattlingly reeled off Molly on the Shore for string quartet.

CD 13: Songs for Mezzo [73:49] CD 14: Songs for Tenor [69:12] CD 15: Songs for Baritone [64:50] Many old friends here but specially fresh is In Bristol Town for Della Jones and George Black (guitar). The Skye Boat Song here goes with an outboard – never heard it taken this quick. Things are taken in a more measured way in the magical Turn Ye To Me. After-Word ends CD 13 with a sentimental vocalise. CD 14 takes us to the tenor songs sung by Martyn Hill in his best darkly-inflected voice. These include just over half an hour of Kipling songs with an accent adopted reasonably convincingly. John Lavender who in the late 1980s recorded the two piano works with Penelope Thwaites (3 CDs on Pearl) joins Ms Thwaites again for the macabre jaunty The Widow’s Party. Three Burns poems follow in affecting settings the best of which is the quietly intoned Afton Water – a discovery. There are more Scottish songs before the disc closes – another fine setting in Fair Young Mary with the piano trill echoing the bardic clarsach. If Scotland and Kipling are ready and present as themes then can Scandinavia be far behind? Track 17 offers The Power of Love, again with those bardic arpeggios in the piano. The affecting baritone is Stephen Varcoe. The standout track is the brisk-brusque British Waterside. The Delian The Pretty Maid Milkin’ Her Cow is followed by the punchy and kinetic The Lost Lady Found. He tackles a Scottish group and a set of six nicely varied songs using words by Kipling. Varcoe is especially appealing in Hard-Hearted Barb’ra Ellen. Songs of a different cast - perhaps closer to recital efforts by Stanford, Head, Ireland and Quilter – are The Secrets of the Sea (Longfellow) and Sailor’s Chanty (Conan Doyle). They’re very good and deserve to join the repertoire ballads alongside Santa Chiara and Great Things.

CD 16: Works for (up to five) Pianos [68:55] This is a wonderful disc and thoroughly enjoyable. Green Bushes works predictably well. After that exuberant pounding the gentler patterns of Let’s Dance Gay and Zanzibar Boat Song are welcome indeed. Pastoral visions shine among the chime of English Dance. The Widow’s Party March connects with the Shepherd’s Hey strand and does so with candour. Random Round appears here in a version by and played by Barry Peter Ould – who is the mover and shaker behind so much that appears here. Good to see the name of Rhondda Gillespie (1941-2010) among the pianists. I recall her LP of the Bliss and Lambert piano sonatas (Argo ZRG786). The multiple patterns of The Warriors are revealed with greater transparency in this edition but I prefer the volcanic opulence of the orchestral version.

CD 17: Works for Solo Piano I [78:01] CD 18: Works for Solo Piano II [74:29] CD 19: Works for Solo Piano III [75:49] Penelope Thwaites is one of the inspired mainstays of this set. Her consistent and long-sustained practical and artistic insight into the genre dates back to those Pearl CDs (have the masters been lost?). She presides over the last three discs of the set. The Klavierstück in B flat may be early but it is very affecting and is here given the best of advocacy. Nothing feels routine or time-serving. Great care seems to have been taken even with the most sentimental of trifles. Walking Tune is a lovely piece – breathing April’s pastoral zephyrs. Scotch Strathspey and Reel has all the zest and intricately powered gearing of Green Bushes and Random Round. Thunderous grandeur is found for the Lisztian tremors of the Tchaikovsky Waltz paraphrase. In Dahomey (Cakewalk Smasher) has a showy virtuosity that shares the stage with Joplin. By the time you get to the end of this set you will recognise the many friends that have passed in parade in front of your ears in ‘dishings’ for everything from full orchestra through to solo piano. Naturally many of the pieces - such as Lisbon - are terrifically challenging to play and Grainger spares no knuckles, wrists or arms. On the other hand on CD 19 we also hear versions of five of the classics from The Easy Grainger book. Ms Thwaites’ poetic sympathies are fully engaged by the sighing My Robin is to the Greenwood Gone – the last track on CD 18. CD 19 starts memorably with the shimmering of Lullaby from Tribute to Foster. Grainger cut down the chirpy chipper Children’s March for the solo piano version. The Strauss Rosenkavalier Ramble is affectionately done. Blithe Bells settles like a benediction around the listener’s shoulders – tempo and dynamics well judged. Much the same applies to the chinoiserie porcelain bell-carillons of Beautiful Fresh Flower.

If you stand awed or unconvinced by this set despite its many and obvious attractions then try before you buy with Chandos’s inexpensive Introduction to Grainger (drawn from the Edition). I would only criticise that disc for not including The Warriors. Still not won round? Then move to Australian Eloquence’s two CD set (480 2205) reissuing the Maltings’ Britten and Bedford Decca recordings alongside John Eliot Gardiner’s eruptive and well recorded The Warriors – once coupled on DG with Gardiner’s The Planets. There are a couple of other notable Grainger one-offs. On Cala (review review) or ABC Classics (review) there’s an orchestral CD including The Warriors and the two Hill-Songs (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Geoffrey Simon) and Hyperion have a very strong Jungle Book which was recently reviewed here.

At the other extreme, if this set is not enough, then 2011 should see more Grainger discs though nothing approaching this set. In addition the Grainger Society offers a welcome and a treasury of information and more (info@percygrainger.org.uk). Its secretary Barry Peter Ould is The Grainger Edition series consultant and also wrote the notes which rather than being on a CD-ROM are here in a user-friendly booklet which also includes all the sung words. John Bird’s Grainger biography will provide further enlightenment and this year has seen the publication of The New Grainger Companion edited by Penelope Thwaites.

Chandos are not really ones for humungous boxed sets. Over the years there have been very few. The complete Walton set was one CHAN9426(23) - would that they would reissue that set in this format. Last year there was the Chandos 30 box of which a few copies are still available. It shows the regard Chandos has for the Grainger series that vol. 1 of the orchestral Grainger was included among that elite 30.

Glorious. It’s difficult to imagine that there would ever be any competition for this uniquely cornucopiac offering.

The Power of Rome and the Christian Heartby Percy Aldridge Grainger Conductor:
Timothy Reynish
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Period: 20th Century Written: 1918-1943; USA

117.

Hill Song no 1by Percy Aldridge Grainger Conductor:
Clark Rundell
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Period: 20th Century Written: 1902/1921

118.

Hill Song no 2by Percy Aldridge Grainger Conductor:
Clark Rundell
Orchestra/Ensemble:
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Period: 20th Century Written: 1901-1907

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